The Tin Man's Heart
by Kat Lee formerly Pirate Turner
Summary: Scarecrow confronts Tin Man over the true reason why he wants a heart; then the duo must rescue the Cowardly Lion. Threesome Slash.


Title: "The Tin Man's Heart"  
Author: Pirate Turner  
Rating: PG  
Summary: Scarecrow confronts Tin Man over the true reason why he wants a heart; then the duo must rescue the Cowardly Lion.  
Spoilers: None  
Warnings: Slash, Established Relationship, Threesome  
Word Count (excluding heading): 2,963  
Disclaimer: Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, Dorothy, Toto, and the Wizard of Oz are & TM Frank Baum, not the author, and are used without permission. Everything else is & TM the author. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.

Tin Man sighed as Dorothy hurried off into the bushes with Toto nipping playfully at her heels. The girl's departure to answer nature's call finally gave him the chance to find out what was bothering the men he loved. He rested his axe against a post and turned to the Lion first.

The Cowardly Lion was whimpering as he wrung his tail nervously through his paws. His furry legs were pressed tightly together, and he kept wriggling from one side to the other. "Lion, dear," Tin Man called as the Scarecrow looked on imploringly, "whatever is the matter?"

"I gotta go!" Lion whined.

Tin Man frowned. "Where do you need to go?"

"Somewhere! Anywhere!" Lion whimpered. "I don't care! I just gotta go!"

At Tin Man's incredulous look, Scarecrow spoke up, taking charge for the first time in days. "He needs to relieve himself, Tinny. Lion," he asked in concern as he walked closer to him, "what are you scared of?" He gingerly touched his shoulders and immediately felt him trembling.

"They'll look!" Lion cried, wringing his tail so hard that the other men winced for they were sure it must hurt. "They'll laugh!"

"We won't look," Scarecrow vowed, "and we won't laugh."

"Not you!" Lion whined.

"Then who?" Tin Man queried.

"The other animals!" Lion's voice broke. He was almost sobbing now as he twisted and twisted, trying his very best to hold in the pressure.

Scarecrow patted his muscular shoulders reassuringly. "They won't watch you relieve yourself," he tried to reason with him. "They don't bother Dorothy."

"I'm not Dorothy!" Lion whined desperately.

"We know that," Tin Man assured him, "and we love you for who you are, Lion, but Scarecrow's right. They don't bother Dorothy, and they won't bother you."

Lion considered their advice for a moment as he glanced furtively around them, his worried eyes returning repeatedly to the deeper part of the forest. He pouted, actual tears shimmering in his brown eyes. "But what if they do?" he cried.

"We'll come," Scarecrow promised.

Tin Man picked up his axe and swung it deftly, but harmlessly, through empty air. "And I'll bring my axe."

"And I'll scream," Scarecrow added, "and we'll scare them off."

"And teach them a lesson for messing with the Lion we love," Tin Man concluded. He was beaming now as he stood side by side with Scarecrow.

The Cowardly Lion smiled tremulously at the both of them. "Y-You'd do that for me?"

"Of course!" Tin Man answered.

"We love you!" Scarecrow assured.

"Aw, shucks, guys," Lion murmured, blushing and twisting his tail, "I'd hug ya, but I really gotta go. If I call . . . "

"We'll come," Scarecrow and Tin Man said in unison. They looked at each other in surprise. Tin Man smiled warmly, but then his face fell as Scarecrow looked away.

"Thanks!" Lion exclaimed and sprinted off into the forest. He was already down on all fours by the time they lost sight of the tip of his bushy tail which was beginning not to be so bushy any longer as he kept wringing the hairs out of it.

Tin Man turned to Scarecrow the very moment he could no longer see Lion. He put his axe back down, freeing his hands and opening his arms in that simple movement, and looked at him with great worry shining in his dark eyes and on his silver face. "Scarecrow," he asked cautiously, "would you like to tell me what's going on?"

Scarecrow diverted his gaze once more from Tin Man's questing, concerned eyes. His black eyes roamed the forest, the sky above their heads, and the ground beneath their feet. He looked anywhere and everywhere but at his best friend in all the world.

Tin Man placed a hand upon Scarecrow's shoulder as gently as he possibly could. "Whatever it is," he spoke softly, "you can tell me."

"I'm scared," Scarecrow admitted in a small voice. He shrank away from Tin Man's hand and walked away, desperate to put some distance between them before he broke down and started sobbing and sounding as timid and fearful as Lion. Tin Man would not like him if he was weak . . . He knew it didn't bother him with the Lion, but he was different. Scarecrow knew Tin Man would expect him to be a man, not a cub.

"Scared of what?" Tin Man questioned. "Scarecrow," he pleaded, his silver hands spread wide open in front of him, "don't walk away from me! Talk to me!"

Scarecrow whirled around to face him, and Tin Man was surprised to see agonizing sorrow upon his face. He looked so sad that there was no doubt in Tin Man's mind that if Scarecrow started crying, his tears would fill a lake big enough to cover the entire Emerald City. "You want a heart," Scarecrow accused in a wretched voice full of sorrow.

"And you a brain and Lion courage and Dorothy wants to go home . . . "

"This isn't about what we want," Scarecrow told him. "It's about what _you_ want. You want to change."

"I want a heart," Tin Man confirmed.

A sound that suspiciously resembled a sob broke from Scarecrow's mouth. "You want to stop loving us!"

Tin Man's jaw dropped open in shock. His hinges could not have gone more slack if he had suddenly had a gigantic oil can dumped onto his mouth. "I -- I -- I -- WHAT!?!" he finally managed to shout.

"You want to stop loving us," Scarecrow repeated, gazing at him through the saddest eyes Tin Man had ever seen. His tears began to fall, and Tin Man hurt inside with a pain that was completely unfamiliar to him. "The heart dictates who we love," Scarecrow explained as though his reasoning should be obvious to him. "You want a new one. Why else would you want a new one if not to stop loving those who you feel unworthy of your love?"

Scarecrow knew he had said the wrong thing and jumped to the wrong conclusion when tears suddenly started slipping from Tin Man's eyes and he began to cry. "Oh, Tinny!" he exclaimed, jumping to his side and almost falling in the process. He waved his straw arms haplessly about as he fought to keep his balance. "Don't cry!" he begged. "Please don't cry!" He patted his tears away with his hands made of straw and wished fervently yet again for fingers. If the Wizard could give him a brain, perhaps next he could give him a body made of flesh and blood if he could somehow, by some miracle, ever get lucky enough to have his two fondest wishes granted?

"Don't cry!" he repeated as Tin Man began to wail openly, larger teardrops splashing down onto his tin body. "Oh please don't cry! Dorothy has the oil can!" he reminded him.

"I don't care!" Tin Man squalled. "Let me rust! You think I don't love you!"

"No! No! I know you love me!" Scarecrow's face fell again, his sorrow shining through his attempt to cheer up his love and more tears running down his straw. "At least for now you do," he murmured to which Tin Man cried even harder.

"Oh, Scarecrow," he wailed, "I never wanted to stop loving you! I only wanted to be able to love you better, to really love you!"

Now it was Scarecrow's turn to look at Tin Man in confusion. "But you do love me," he said, patting more of Tin Man's tears away while his own continued to trickle. Despite knowing that he could never stop them all before Tin Man froze up, he was reluctant to call for Dorothy until he had learned the truth. If Tin Man didn't want a new heart to stop loving himself and Lion, why did he want one? It couldn't be what he had just said because Tin Man showed him every day that he loved them!

"Yes, I do, and I never want to stop! How could you think such a horrible thing?!"

"I don't understand!" Scarecrow wailed. "If it's not that, why do you want a new heart?"

"I told you -- ", he cried, " -- to better love you both!"

"But you already love us! I feel your love for me every time we kiss, every time you touch me! Just one touch from you sizzles my soul, even though there's no fire! You create a fire in me, but it's a good fire, the only good fire there ever was!"

Scarecrow was still struggling to think of the right words to explain how Tin Man made him feel when his love hung his head. "But I could still love you better," he declared, his voice heart-breakingly near to a whimper, "if I had a heart!"

"How?" Scarecrow asked.

"I don't know, but if I had a heart, I would! I could recite poetry to you and feel it! I would tremble inside when you kissed me!"

Scarecrow looked at him in shock. "You don't now?"

"No," Tin Man spoke sorrowfully with a small shake of his head. "Listen to my chest, Scarecrow." He would have opened his arms wider but found he could not for his tears were already setting into his body.

Scarecrow walked forward, closing the distance between them, and leaned his head against Tin Man's chest. He didn't know how he could hear as the farmer who had made him hadn't actually given him ears, but he was sure that once he had his brain, it would be one of a zillion mysteries he would finally understand.

"If I had a heart," Tin Man told him softly, "I could hold you close and you could hear its thump, thump, thump, but now you hear nothing because I don't have one. All you hear is silence -- and that's all I feel."

Scarecrow looked at him with confusion shining in his beady, black eyes. "But you love us."

He nodded. "You were wrong earlier," he told him, "when you said that the heart dictates who you love. It plays a part, true, but only a part." He tried, by habit, to raise a finger to tap his head but could not. "The brain dictates, but the heart truly feels it. I know I love you and what to do to make you both feel pleasure and happiness, but I'm tired of not feeling it myself!" More tears splashed down his face. "And I know that if I had a heart, I could find new ways to love you too, better ways!"

"Oh, Tinny!" Scarecrow cried, throwing his arms around him and holding him tight. "I never knew you couldn't feel -- " His exclamation broke off into a compassionate sob as his own tears began to fall again. They ran in a rivulet, joining Tin Man's tears and rusting his body even more. What Hell it must be to know you were loved and were in love, but yet never feel the passion that Tin Man sent soaring through his body with the briefest of touches!

They were still standing there, both crying and Scarecrow holding Tin Man tightly, when Dorothy returned. "Oh no!" she cried, grabbing the oil can and hurrying to them while Toto barked excitedly.

As she oiled Tin Man's joints, her mind whirled over what could have brought her friends to their current state, and then she realized that the Cowardly Lion was missing! "Where's Lion?" she asked fearfully.

The guys opened their mouths to reply, but their answers were drowned out by a panicked yowl from deep within the forest. "LION!" the trio cried as one. Toto's barks turned angry.

"I've got to go," Scarecrow told Tin Man apologetically as he hobbled off, doing his very best to run.

"Hurry, Dorothy," Tin Man told the girl. "He needs us!"

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying," she answered in a rush as she sped her way down his body, lubricating him as quickly as she possibly could.

Scarecrow made certain to make extra noise as he thrashed through the low-hanging branches of the trees. He hoped that the racket might scare Lion's attacker away as he followed his feline lover's cries of fear and anguish. When he finally broke through the thickly-nestled trees to the area where Lion was still stooped, Scarecrow slipped. His arms flailed, and he barely managed to grab one of the nearby branches and cling to it to keep from falling.

A low voice chuckled darkly at his disgrace. "Shut up," Scarecrow told the being that he could not yet see, "and get away from him!"

"Where's Tin Man?" Lion whimpered.

"He's coming," Scarecrow answered as he turned to see what beast was bullying his poor, terrified love. His mouth promptly dropped open in shock. "Lion!" he cried. "Th-Th-Th-That's a -- "

"I know what it is," Lion sobbed, nearly wringing his sorrowful tail in two. "Just make it stop!" He screamed as the other animal moved in on him again, and Scarecrow could only watch, stunned, at the ugliness that proceeded.

* * *

They heard Tin Man's fierce, angry battle cries long before they actually saw him. Scarecrow had remained where he was, too shocked to move, as the bully had continued tormenting Lion. Hearing Tin Man charging to the rescue finally galvanized Scarecrow into action as well. He strode forward but then slipped again on the leaves. As he fell, he caught sight of the movement of something brown and furry and realized that the bully had tripped him.

Lion's attacker now whirled to glare down at him. He snickered menacingly. "It's not going to work on me!" Scarecrow cried. The animal leaned forward, and he scrunched his eyes quickly closed. When nothing happened, he peeked one eye open and immediately grimaced as the animal dodged as close to his face as he could jump; squealed in a high-pitched voice; turned his gums inside out; wagged his long, purpled tongue at him; and used his tiny paws to turn his eyelids inside out.

The laughing mouse landed on the ground with his hands pressed against his belly just as Tin Man swung his axe and jumped down behind him. The fat, little mouse kept his attention focused on Scarecrow and Lion as he swept his tail in front of Tin Man's feet. Tin Man raised his booted foot and then stomped down on the tail of the cruel mouse.

The mouse's squeaks echoed through the forest. He turned watering eyes on Tin Man who lifted his foot and let him pull his tail to him. "You didn't have to do that!" he cried.

"You didn't have to scare my friends," Tin Man countered, "and you shouldn't be scaring strangers who've done nothing to you."

"But it's fun!" blubbered the mouse, his lower lip trembling as he gingerly stroked his weakly-twitching tail.

"Is it?" Tin Man questioned with the eerie warning tone of death echoing in his voice. He swung his axe through the air, a scant inch above the fat forest mouse's head. The mouse's eyes bugged out, his mouth opened with his hideous tongue hanging four feet out as he screamed. He turned tail and ran away at last.

Lion sniffled in the aftermath as he slowly pulled himself together. He stood hesitantly erect as he watched Tin Man patch Scarecrow's straw back together from where it had fallen out of his loose shirt when he'd fell. They stood together, when Scarecrow was whole again, silently watching Lion. He was relieved and thankful to see no condemnation in their eyes. He kicked a few leaves over what he had done, then prowled forward to join them. They greeted him with a hug.

"Sorry," Lion whimpered as they embraced him in a group hug. His tail curled between his legs. "I shouldn't be such a scaredy cat."

"It's okay," Scarecrow assured him. "He was so ugly he was scary!"

Lion looked at them with unshed tears glittering in his dark eyes. "Thanks for coming."

"Always," Tin Man assured him to which Scarecrow nodded.

"We'll always be here for you, Lion."

"Aw, shucks," Lion crooned and hugged them tightly against his fur once more.

* * *

"I never knew ugly faces could be so scary," Scarecrow admitted shyly late that night long after Lion, Dorothy, and Toto had all fallen asleep and he and Tin Man still watched over their friends who were becoming more and more a little family with each passing day.

Tin Man gazed into Scarecrow's eyes underneath the sparkling stars of Oz and knew that his love was waiting for him to say something condescending of his failed effort to rescue their Lion. No such words came, however, as Tin Man rose, walked over to Scarecrow, knelt beside the rock he sat upon, and pulled him into his arms. "It's okay," he said and kissed him. Love and reassurance poured into the gentle kiss and set Scarecrow's spirit on fire.

When a snore from Dorothy caused them to break apart, Scarecrow smiled up at Tin Man, his dazzled eyes alight with love and joy. "No one," he told him, "could love us better than you already do, my dearest darling. I love you!" He confirmed his words with a sweetly passionate kiss that he wished would send as many lightning bolts cascading through Tin Man as it did him. One day, he vowed silently, one day it would for one day Tinny would have the heart he deserved and Scarecrow would never stop filling it with all the love, comfort, happiness, and enormous pleasure that his Tinny was always giving him.

One day they would meet the Wizard, and then all their dreams would come true. As Scarecrow's own magical heart soared far pass the stars, he realized that his two greatest dreams already had come true in the forms of Tinny and Lion and the all-consuming love they shared.

**The End**

Author's Note: If you enjoyed this story, or any of my other writings, I hope you'll consider joining my friends and I at a brand new fan fic/art site we're creating called Ficcers Unite. We welcome all fandoms, pairings (slash and het), and even no pairings at all, and we'll also be RPing a world where Disney and Marvel comes together in one universe. Come on over and check us out at ficcersuniteDOTproboardsDOTcom today!


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